While You Weren't Looking
by Vaetra
Summary: You can't imagine the things they do when they think the other one isn't looking... Sweenett, sort of.
1. Chapter 1

_Okay, frankly, I have no idea what this is. It started out as me trying to shake my writer's block, which has been driving me mad lately, and then it sort of developed a plot, allbeit a really weird and random one. Anyway, let me know what you think, and maybe I'll continue it..._

She couldn't stand the anguish in his face. Day after day she saw it, sometimes glinting only faintly underneath a chilly smirk or a feral smile, sometimes burning as clearly as it had the day she'd told him what had happened to his family. It broke her heart to see him in such distress, and even more to know that she could do nothing to try to ease his suffering. He didn't let her touch him anymore, not since her advice to be patient had cost him the judge. It was like he was afraid she would distract him from his deadly purpose, that he might miss something important while he was wasting time with his business partner.

So he had distanced himself from her even more than before, hiding up in his shop for hours on end, polishing those razors with the care and tenderness of a much gentler man, and avoiding the woman downstairs at all costs. In fact, Mrs Lovett had hardly seen her tenant for days now, not since he had danced with her around her little kitchen, praising her genius and plotting their latest business endeavour.

Now, when she brought him his meals—(and came back later to collect them after they had grown cold, sitting untouched on the bureau)—and when she took his bloodied clothes from him at the end of the day, Mrs Lovett tried to get him to engage in conversation. But this was as futile a quest as trying to get Sweeney Todd to indulge in such other frivolities as eating or sleeping; his responses were minimal or nonexistent, and if she pressed him for too long, he would tell her to leave, softly at first, but snarling at her like a wild animal if she dared to linger.

Lovett tried to understand how he must be feeling, but she knew she could never really comprehend what it would be like to have love—such a perfect, blissful love—yanked away. This was namely because she had never had a love like that to begin with. Albert had been a marriage of convenience, not an entirely unpleasant union, but certainly not an adoring one. As for Benjamin Barker and Sweeney Todd both, she had had no sign that that feeling was reciprocated, or even know of by the object of her affections. It was with a bleak little laugh that the baker realized she had never actually experienced real love—to care for someone and have those feelings returned. She would have despaired for herself and her future were it not for Sweeney Todd.

For in that man she saw hope. Hope for a new life, and for the love she'd been dreaming of for well over fifteen years. Mrs Lovett might not be able to understand exactly what her neighbour was going through, but she could still help him. If only he would let her. If only he would realize.

Gazing up at the ceiling above her, Mrs Lovett heaved a sigh and actress would have envied. _If he only knew._ It was late now, though the moon was only just rising, round as a coin, but somehow drained looking, as though all the colour had been bled out of it, leaving behind only barren whiteness. The silence from above told her that Mr Todd was sleeping—even demons had to rest sometime, she supposed. Recently, Lovett had taken to staying up even later than he did, forced to wait to burn the piles of stained human skeletons until the city of London was safely asleep, for fear the smell and clouds of greasy black smoke might arouse suspicion.

She had only just come upstairs after finishing this gruesome task, and a glance at the clock told her it was nearly two in the morning. She should go to sleep, she knew, but still she didn't move from the kitchen. The baker gazed out at the bloodless moon and wondered what Mr Todd looked like, sleeping under its light. She didn't think she'd ever seen him sleep. Would his face hold the same sorrow it did by day, or would that be chased away, flooded, perhaps, by some warm dream of the perfect past, like milk poured into dark tea.

Without realizing it, she had put a hand on the doorknob, and was now gazing wistfully at the moon-bleached stairs outside. Surely it couldn't hurt just to go and check on him. H would probably be asleep anyway. He'd never know, and it wasn't like she had any malevolent intent. She just wanted to look at him, to comfort him. With these self-justifying arguments playing over and over in her mind, Mrs Lovett opened the door.

It had been growing colder lately, and tonight was no exception. The rickety wooden steps had been gilded in silver frost, the unsteady light of a streetlamp edging it with glittering gold. It was funny to her that something so drab and unattractive by day could be made so beautiful by night, like a poor serving girl who puts on a sparkling gown in the evening to go dancing.

Mrs Lovett giggled at her overactive imagination and made her way up the stairs, treading on her toes so the heels of her boots wouldn't clunk on the frozen wood. It was silly, what she was doing: risking Sweeney Todd's anger (which she was sure would be extraordinary, if he caught her) simply so she could satisfy a foolish desire to try to comfort the man while he slept, if he wouldn't let her when he was awake. She did wish she could help him, though, aid him somehow in his daily struggle to keep from drowning in his scarlet sea of grief and rage. She felt sorry for him, almost as sorry as she felt for herself, and it was pity for the tortured man that made her hand reach out, without any consent for the rest of her body, and open the barbershop door.

But when she looked in at the dark little shop, still untouched by the deathly moonlight, Mrs Lovett stopped. What on earth was she doing? Sneaking upstairs like a criminal to watch her _neighbour_ while he slept. She really was as mad as they said if she thought she could get away with that. Marveling at her own foolish impulsiveness, and wondering half fearfully what might have happened if she'd allowed herself to continue, Lovett closed the door carefully, so the little bell wouldn't give her away, turned, and nearly jumped out of her skin.

'Mr Todd!'

He was there. Standing on the stair, his silhouette was thin—almost spindly—yet also oddly elegant against the smoky, moon-drenched sky. His face was almost completely obscured by black shadow, and so she couldn't make out his expression, but she got a feeling, from the two cold pinpricks that were his glinting eyes, that it was not brimming with kindness and understanding. He took a step forward, and his voice was low and dangerous.

'What're you doing here?'

Mrs Lovett had the urge to back away from him, but in an effort to appear innocent and unafraid, she stood her ground. Her voice betrayed her, though, trembling like a candle flame in a high gale. 'N-nothing, Mr Todd, I… I just…'

No excuses came and he took a step towards her, his shoulders blotting out the moon. Mrs Lovett's breath caught, and she realized that for all her undying affection, she still didn't completely trust Sweeney Todd. 'What are you doing here, Mrs Lovett?' He said again, another step further dissolving the distance between them.

Her voice was small. 'I… I don't know.'

Another step, and she could feel the whisper of breath on her face as he hissed, 'You're lying.'

'No, I—'

Her voice choked off, throat closing in surprise as Todd's pale hand snaked up to caress her neck ever so softly. 'The wise thing to do,' he whispered, causing her to shudder with mingled fear and desire, 'would be to cut your throat… But I'll let you go.' His thumb suddenly pressed down on Mrs Lovett's neck, extracting a strangled noise from her as she fought for air. 'Do not let me catch you up here again.'

Then the pressure of his hand was abruptly lifted, and she heard the bell sound and the door snap shut as Sweeney Todd retreated back into his dust-smothered, silver-lined lair. Though he was no longer casually choking her, Lovett continued to hold her breath as she made her way back downstairs, along the hall, and into bed. It was a long time before she let it out again.


	2. Chapter 2

_So, I continued this. Yay! This is essentially just Sweeney's pov on chapter one, with a bit more added on. It's very dark and creepy, and not much happens, but I can promise that there will (maybe) be actual **action** in the next chapter. Shocking, isn't it? Anyway, thanks very much to my new beta, Obscure Bird, for helping me with this chapter. (Insert smug grin here.)_

Benjamin Barker used to be afraid of the dark. It was embarrassing for a grown man to leap immediately into bed the instant the lamps were doused, but his wife didn't mind. Lucy was his other incentive for sliding so quickly under the covers. Her adoration chased away the darkness, glowing like pale gold, and he wasn't afraid when she was near. In Australia, though, the perception of dark had changed for Mr Barker. The sun was blinding, and hellishly hot, but his cell, although tiny and stinking of human filth, had at least been shadowy and cool. He soon learned that even this was preferable to the blazing desert outside, and so the dark had become his friend. Fifteen years later, it still was.

Sweeney Todd felt perfectly comfortable as he walked almost leisurely through the shadow-infested park, a place no respectable Londoner would dare tread through at night, not with the people who came out after dark. The demon barber, however, was himself one of those undesirable nightwalkers that all the _normal_ citizens avoided, and he knew he had nothing to fear from his fellow criminals.

The dark was preferable to him now. It softened the edges of things, hid those less than pleasant facets of London that the pale grey daylight illuminated with such horrifying detail. Not only that, he thought, but it graced the things it did leave exposed with a kind of macabre beauty.

The bare branches of a spreading oak tree were stark and crooked against the moon, like broken fingers reaching up in supplication, and the few stars that burned faintly through the city's smog were as beautiful and chilly as ice, as silver, even. Mr Todd reached down and drew one of his ever-present friends from the holster at his hip and unfolded it, letting it smile in the weak starlight. Night made everything beautiful, he mused, noting how it gilded even the ice-dusted steps to his shop with shimmering silver. As he preferred dark to light, Sweeney Todd now found cold silver more beautiful than glowing gold. Yet another difference between him and Benjamin Barker.

Grimacing slightly at the memory of that man—so innocent, so mild-mannered, so _foolish_—Todd moved slowly and deliberately up the rickety staircase, his practiced footsteps hardly making a sound on the old wood. At the second to top step, though, he stiffened, black eyes catching on a sudden flutter of movement outside his shop door. What new horror was this? A thief, trying to break into his shop? It had to be; no one out at this hour could have anything less than sinister intentions. Mr Todd bristled. There wasn't a thing in that entire building he would care about losing, except—his hand flew to his belt. One of them was here, yes, but the others… The thought of some common criminal defiling the precious silver with his filthy hands nearly turned the barber's stomach.

Heartbeat pounding mercilessly in his temples, he took another step up the staircase. He knew so well the position of the razor at his hip that he didn't have to even glance down as he reached for it, and unconscious hiss of breath escaping through his teeth.

The thief turned, her bone-white skin the only pale thing in all that lovely darkness.

'Mr Todd!'

_Her!_ He had to admit he was surprised to find it was Mrs Lovett, of all people, who was trying to break into his shop and steal his friends in the dead of night. He faltered for a moment, wanting to find some confirmation of her bad intent before her condemned her completely. 'What are you doing here?'

If he had doubted his landlady's guilt, however, that uncertainty was erased when he saw the look in her eyes: mingled panic, surprise, and apprehension. Of course she had wanted his razors. Thinking back, he remembered her covetous glances when she'd first given them back to him, her insistence on following him wherever he went with them. Who _wouldn't_ want something so beautiful? Sweeney Todd realized that he was in the possession of a great treasure. He must guard it with even more fervor than before.

He ignored Lovett's stammered excuses as he advanced on her, sliding a cold hand over her pretty porcelain neck. Her skin was so pale it almost glowed in the moonlight. His mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. The dark really did make everything more beautiful…

Mr Todd killed this thought so quickly it was almost as though it had never entered his mind—a tiny sip of spat-out sin that left nothing behind but the faint taste of revulsion at his momentary betrayal of Lucy's memory.

…But still, he let the baker go. He regretted the decision immediately afterwards, though he knew it would be irrational and even downright foolish to kill Mrs Lovett, not when he needed her for so much. Still, Todd thought, he would have liked to watch the cascade of rubies, startled up from her throat, stain that white skin scarlet. He placed his formerly holstered razor back into the smooth wooden box with its fellows. Thank heavens he had arrived in time—she hadn't touched his silver treasures.

She'd wanted to, though; Sweeney had seen it in her dark eyes, the way they'd darted one more desperate time to the door before she'd answered him. She never was a good liar. Turning back to his patient friends—(they were used to his errant mind by now, and had learned to wait while his eyes glazed over, staring out into space as he was gripped by some memory)—the barber snapped the box shut. His fingers lingered on the lid, though, jealously caressing the polished wood. There were too many greedy people in the world that would pay dearly for a taste of the beauty he guarded.

Unable to be away from the cold, smooth silver for too long, Mr Todd opened the box again and removed one of his deadly friends from its cradle, flicking it open gently. He lost himself in the mirror-like surface, whispering comfort to the metal. 'Don't worry, my friend, she won't have you. There now, nothing's going to harm you… not while I'm around.'


	3. Chapter 3

_Why yes, it's another chapter! It was a rather funny one to write. I had no idea where it was going, and then _this _happened. Oh, and anyone who can tell what movie some of Sweeney and Lovett's later lines are taken/adapted from gets a meat pie... or perhaps just profound congratulations. (Don't feel bad if you don't-- they're rather vague.)_

'Mr T?'

She rapped lightly on the door. She could see his back through the frosted glass, turned carefully away from her to face the window, but she knew he'd heard her.

'Mr Todd, I wish you'd let me in.'

Still he didn't move. Mrs Lovett frowned. This was getting ridiculous. Sweeney Todd had refused to let her into his shop for nearly three days now, never answering the door when she tried to speak to him, and forcing her to leave his meals and other necessities on the step outside. Surely it wasn't healthy for a man to spend all his time cooped up like that. He'd use up all the air in there if he didn't come out soon. More frustrating still was the fact that, as far as Mrs Lovett could tell, she had done nothing at all to warrant such shunning. True, there was the incident a few nights ago when he'd caught her poking about up here, but it had been a stupid affair, and she was sure he couldn't still be angry with her for it. Despite all his venom, Sweeney Todd had a rather short memory for anything that didn't concern the judge, or his wonderful razors.

She knocked again, harder this time. 'C'mon, love, don't be stupid. Open the door.'

He turned around then, black eyes slitted with anger, and quickly Mrs Lovett realized she had gone too far. She stepped away from the door, and she saw that her breath had left a little blush of condensation on the glass. And for a moment she felt absurdly guilty about getting _breath_ on his _window_—before Mr Todd wrenched the door open from the other side, setting the bell jingling about like a mad hornet.

He made an expression at her, an odd pull of the mouth that Mrs Lovett realized was supposed to be a smile. 'Is there something you _want_, Mrs Lovett?"

She gulped. She had spent enough time around Mr Todd to know that he was in one of his frightening, murderous moods, the kind you were lucky to escape from alive. What had sparked it, however, she still couldn't say. 'I… I just wanted to see you, love. I haven't seen you in ages…'

Another smile cracked his face like ice breaking on a frozen lake. 'Indeed, my pet. You wanted to _see_ me. How very sweet of you. You always were thoughtful.'

Though these were the words Mrs Lovett had wanted to hear from her barber for a very long time, the way he spoke them—with a snarling imitation of sincerity that sent chills down her spine—erased any happiness she might have felt. Mr Todd was admittedly a violent and unpredictable creature, and he frightened her sometimes. 'Mr T…' she tried cautiously.

He gripped her wrist, his other arm held out in a gesture of mock welcome she had often seen him use on his customers. She winced. That couldn't bode well. 'By all means, come in, Mrs Lovett. That _is_ what you wanted to do, isn't it?'

'I'—

Without waiting for an answer, he pulled her forward and shoved her into his barber's chair. She sprang up again, fear desperately beating its wings against the cage of her ribs. Todd looked up from where he had been rather ominously opening his box of razors. Withdrawing one, he paced towards her with measured steps. 'Why don't you sit _down_, Mrs Lovett?'

'I… You're going to kill me, aren't you?'

'Why ever would you think such a thing of me? You, who seem to know me so much better than anyone else?' His voice had a singsong quality now, mocking her.

'What'—

'We are more alike than you think, darling.'

'Mr T, what are you'—

He whipped the razor up to her neck, though whether it was a threat or an offering, she couldn't tell. '_These_. My friends. You want them too, I know you do. I've seen you.'

The fear in her eyes twisted suddenly into confusion. He thought she wanted to steal his _razors_? She almost laughed, but was thankfully able to choke it back. 'I can assure you, love, I've no intention of;--

Todd growled, circling her now, the silver in his hand still glinting like a promise. 'I've seen the way you look at me when I have them. I saw you trying to break into my shop.'

Mrs Lovett's eyes widened. Surely he couldn't be oblivious to her affection? She hadn't been exactly subtle. 'I don't stare at you because of the razors, you great useless thing.' She gulped, suddenly painfully aware of how close the stinging edge of the blade was to her skin. 'I… I do it because…' The unguarded honesty in here eyes made him sick, and he looked away. 'I love you. Did you not know?'

Sweeney had been about to hiss another threat at her, or perhaps even just slit her throat and get it over with, but his landlady's tender admission froze him in place. He stopped circling her, and his arm dropped shakily back to his side, the razor grazing her collarbone as it fell. Half a dozen emotions were rising in his throat, snaking and tangling together, choking him. Primary amongst them was relief; he was glad to know that his friends were safe, and also that he wouldn't have to kill the baker, for he knew that covering up all his murders would undoubtedly be much harder without her. Still, that didn't prevent him from being furious with this woman _How dare she?_ Didn't she realize that nothing could ever come of it? Her haphazard affection was an insult to Lucy's memory, a blatant disrespect to it.

He looked back into Mrs Lovett's dark eyes, wide with anticipation and disbelief at what she'd just said. Todd hated that, for a moment, he wanted to live up to her hopes, to be a man she wouldn't have to fear being in love with, to give her something back. He reminded himself that it wasn't really him she loved, but a shadow of the man he used to be. He regarded her with flat eyes. 'I cannot give you what you seek.'

Her eyes glittered with tears, but they didn't spill outside her lashes. 'I know.'

He nodded shortly, suddenly unable to look at her.

'So will things be different now?' She asked softly.

'How do you mean?'

"Will you not talk to me now? Ignore me? Hate me?'

She stared at his profile, somehow dark against the window, despite his ice-pale skin. He didn't move for a moment, and then, 'I don't hate you, Mrs Lovett.'

A noise somewhere between a sob and a shriek of laughter escaped the bakers lips. How absurd that while others looked for a declaration of adoration and undying love from the one they cared for, she was just glad to know he didn't despise her.

Mr Todd gave her another of his inscrutable glances, and she smiled weakly. 'I'll be going now, Mr T. Let—let me know if you need anything.'

He nodded, and she closed the door behind her. He watched her go, and when she'd disappeared back into her shop, he turned away, running a hand over his face. Why could nothing be simple?


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter four! This must be some kind of record. It's a bit short, but the next one (maybe) will be longer. Thanks again to Obscure Bird for beta-ing and to everyone who reviewed. _

Tobias Ragg was not a particularly ethical young man; he couldn't afford to be. He had learned at a very early age that people with a squeaky clean set of morals were soon ground into the mud by those with fewer inhibitions. In order to survive on the streets of London, you had to lower your standards somewhat. But though Toby wasn't exactly lily white himself, he knew basic right from wrong. And the things that he was beginning to perceive happening around him—the half-whispered secrets, the dark glances that contained more meaning than they should—seemed _wrong_ in a way he couldn't quite place. He didn't like to doubt Mrs Lovett, or even her rather sinister upstairs neighbour, really, but he could only pretend to ignore the signs for so long.

They were little things, insignificant on their own, but added together, they began to create a disturbing pattern that made Toby shudder if he thought of it for too long. But think of it he did. He thought it was odd that, though he was supposed to help her around the shop, Mrs Lovett had absolutely forbidden him to come with her down to the bake house, and that though he often went into town to run errands for her, he had never once been sent to the butcher's to buy more meat. In fact, he didn't think he'd ever even seen exactly what went into the pies before they were served.

Toby shot a nervous glance across the counter at the baker, who was pounding away mercilessly at a slab of thick, pasty white dough. An unconscious smile curved her lips—a knowing smile full of self-satisfaction and a devious pride in her own cleverness. Toby frowned. There was too much behind that smile. He'd seen it fixed firmly in place as she served the seemingly endless stream of customers, plying them with more food, more ale, urging them to eat slowly, to savour the 'secret recipe.'

It was a pretty smile, but it didn't reach her eyes, eyes that were always straying up the rickety stairs to where Toby knew Sweeney Todd must be standing at his wide window, staring out at the London streets with that odd predatory look in his eyes. Toby had seen the way Mrs Lovett would look at the barber, with an expression of pure devotion that nearly made him sick. He couldn't understand what she saw in that man, always brooding up in his shop, snarling like an animal if anyone came too close. It made no sense to the boy, and he only wished he could make his adopted mother see how unhealthy her infatuation with that demon really was.

At that moment, the woman looked up from dusting the flour off her rolling pin. It hung in the air around her like a ghostly cloud. 'Something you need, Toby, dear?'

The boy realized with a start that he'd been frowning at her for some minutes now, his gaze laced with suspicion. 'I—oh, I, er, was wondering if I could have some more gin, please, ma'am.'

She tutted. 'Going to drink me out of house and home, you are. But since you asked politely…' She set the bottle down in front of him, and returned to the counter, her eyes flicking briefly to the ceiling as she went.

Toby's stomach flipped with an odd sort of apprehension as her features softened at the sight of the grimy boards overhead. Something was definitely not right here, and the boy had decided that he must take it upon himself to find out what it was.

It was funny, Sweeney Todd thought, how such a little bit of information—stupid, trivial information, he reminded himself—could change everything so very much. Now that he knew the truth about his landlady's feelings towards him, Todd couldn't believe he hadn't spotted it before. Every tiny gesture that he had been previously oblivious to—a little melting smile, a touch that lingered just a moment too long—he now construed as yet more evidence of Mrs Lovett's deep-seated adoration of him. Worst of all, there was a tiny, craven part of the barber, huddled away in some dusty corner of his subconscious that enjoyed her affection.

It had been so long since he had experienced any kind of love, welcome or not, that Todd had almost forgotten what it felt like to be wanted. He was horrified to find that small fragment of himself warming to the sensation, remembering old, almost forgotten tenderness, and wanting this new desire from the woman downstairs almost as much as he wanted sometimes to sink his darling razor into her all-too-lovely throat. He would have ignored her if he could, but he knew now that she would only stand at his door with those ridiculous puppydog eyes until he sullenly relented.

So the barber tolerated Mrs Lovett, appearing, to all intents and purposes, unchanged in his attitude towards her. In truth, however, his feelings about the woman shifted with every time he laid eyes on her. There were days when he was hardly aware of her presence—so lost was he in tender thoughts of the past, or violent ones of the future—and other times when she would look at him, eyes wide with an innocence a woman of her years and experience should not still possess, and he would think that maybe the life after his vengeance didn't have to be so desolate after all. Then the next day he would find his fingers itching to wring her neck, simply to put an end to that happily chattering _voice._

Sweeney Todd didn't like not knowing how he felt about anyone or anything; he didn't like being uncertain. He stared out the window, down at the dirty street where the hunch-backed old beggar woman was making her rounds. Mrs Lovett, to him, was all uncertainty. She was a puzzle, a locked door, and he resolved then to find just what unspoken secrets she might be hiding.


	5. Chapter 5

_New chapter. Many things happen. That's all._

The bell rang on the door of Sweeney Todd's Tonsorial Parlour. He turned, ingratiating smile already stretching his mouth, only to see that it wasn't an unfortunate customer coming through the door, but Mrs Lovett, bearing a tray with a light blue china teapot, matching cups, and a plate of lumpy scones. Todd dropped his mock friendly expression as quickly as he had donned it, and regarded his landlady with something close to apprehension, as though she might fling herself on him at any moment. 'What are you doing here?'

She gave him one of those half exasperated, half adoring looks that told him that though he was completely mad, she simply couldn't bear to hold it against him. ''S teatime, Mr Todd. I brought you some.'

'I have a kettle up here.'

She set the tray on the table next to Lucy and Johanna's portrait, frowning. 'Yes, but I know you, Mr T, and you'd never make it for yourself unless I reminded you. And anyway, the tea leaves from downstairs are better.'

Mr Todd rolled his eyes, realizing it was useless, and poured himself a brimming cup of the amber liquid. He lifted it and took an exaggeratedly large swig. The tea was still scalding hot, and it burned his throat on the way down, but he drank it with a sort of grim pleasure, the same masochistic satisfaction he got from downing a tumbler of stinging gin.

To his irritation, the baker filled another teacup for herself and stood by him at the window, warming her hands against the heated china. She fidgeted, obviously uncomfortable with the vast silence that stood between them like still water. 'So… that last customer was a hefty one. Surprised you could get him through the trap door.' She shot him a shy smile, waiting for him to respond to the joke, but he didn't move.

One good thing that had come from her confession of love, Sweeney Todd thought, was that at least she didn't touch him anymore. She used to be all over him, but it was as if now that they both knew the meaning that lay behind any physical contact she bestowed on him, she didn't dare try it anymore. It didn't stop her from speaking, though. 'What was he, a priest?'

'Pastry seller.'

'Oh. Well, at least he practices what he preaches, then.'

His mouth twitched, and she tried to swallow her delighted grin. 'You ain't seen Toby lately, have you, love?'

He kept his eyes fixed on the smudged horizon, but his brow furrowed slightly. 'No. Why?'

Mrs Lovett brushed a ragged strand of hair out of her eyes. 'Oh, it's nothing. Just, I sent him out to the market a couple of hours ago, and he's still not back yet. Probably nothing, though.' She repeated, but her voice held just a shade of worry.

Todd wondered if perhaps he should reassure her, but just then the door opened again with a cheerful tinkle of the bell that didn't really seem to fit the mood inside the room. They both turned to see a pale young man, his hat held in one hand, a tentative smile on his lips. 'Mr Todd, sir?'

Sweeney immediately launched into friendly barber mode, taking the man's hat and coat and embarking on a good-natured monologue about the weather. Mrs Lovett shot him a meaningful glance. 'I'll leave you to it,' she muttered, and then she left, shutting the door behind her.

The bricks of the workhouse were grimy, its windows still blackened with soot, but whole place seemed much smaller than Toby had remembered it. He stood just outside the wrought iron fence, his threadbare jacket pulled tight against the cold, staring up at the horrible building he used to call home. He remembered how, not so long ago when Signor Pirelli had dropped by here, idly searching for an assistant, and had chosen him out of the gaggle of clamoring boys, Toby had thought of the man as his savior—until he had gotten out the rod.

It was easy to be wrong about a person, even one who had done you a good turn, but Toby didn't want to be wrong about Mrs Lovett. He knew very well that if not for her kindness, he would even now be on the other side of that wrought iron fence, looking out instead. He had so much to thank her for, and he didn't like to think that there might be an ugly side to the woman's generosity.

But, the boy reasoned with himself, he actually had no proof of anything sinister going on in the pie shop. No, it was the barbershop that worried him, and more pressingly, the man inside it. He knew that there was something dreadfully wrong with Mr Sweeney Todd; Toby could see it simply in the way he surveyed the world around him. His eyes looked as hollow as empty sockets in his head—dead, as though he was incapable of any emotion at all, save for the occasional fit of blinding anger. Mrs Lovett wasn't like that. She wasn't perfect, certainly, but at least she seemed to display a normal range of emotions, unlike the man she was so foolishly obsessed with.

Toby was moving now. Walking swiftly down the road, way from the workhouse and back towards Fleet Street, he came to a conclusion: it was not Mrs Lovett he had to fear and mistrust, but Sweeney Todd. And with that conclusion came the decision that he must find out exactly what the barber was doing up there in that off-limits shop of his, why such a small number of his customers actually returned from their close shaves, and why, every time he set eyes on Sweeney Todd, Toby's blood seemed to instinctively run cold.

He had reached number 186 now, and he ran up the stairs to the tonsorial parlour, ragged scarf untied and flapping behind him, each footfall sounding like a clap of thunder on the rickety steps. Barely pausing to catch his breath, Toby grabbed the brass handle, flung the door open, and stopped dead.

'If you don't mind me asking, Mr Todd—who was that lady up here with you?'

Todd brushed thick white lather onto his customer's thing cheeks with slow, measured strokes. There was no sense in being hasty—the end result would still be the same. 'Not at all, son. That's Mrs Lovett. She owns the pie shop downstairs. Perhaps you should stop by for one after.' He paused to allow himself a sick grin. 'I assure you, they're good enough to die for.'

The man, head tilted back and eyes closed, didn't notice the barber's feral amusement. 'Yes, perhaps… er, if it's not too bold, sir, are you and Mrs Lovett, er, _involved_?'

Todd stiffened, rage unfolding in his chest like a crimson flower. He refused to examine exactly what it was about this man's innocent (if a bit rude) question that incited him so—he simply focused on the emotion burning within him until all the world narrowed to it, and there was nothing else. His hand clenched, white-knuckled on the back of the barber's chair.

The customer seemed to have finally noticed his distress, and he sat up, opening his eyes, which were full of earnest regret. 'I'm sorry, sir. It was too forward a question. I—'

The barber pressed a hand to the man's forehead, gently tipping his head back against the seat. 'Not at all,' he smiled, and tore the keen edge of the razor against his customer's throat. Hot blood flew into his eyes, blinding him, but as he'd been seeing red already, this hardly made a difference. He sawed at the man's neck, a snarl twisting his mouth. This wasn't usually how things went. After Pirelli, taking a man's life had become almost commonplace; something he did coldly, with complete dispassion. There was hardly even any violence in the act anymore. But now, Mr Todd found himself wanting to hurt this man, to make him suffer for… what? All he had done was ask a question. Foolish and improper, true, but why should that have such a tumultuous effect on the barber?

He lowered his razor back to his side and wiped the blood from his eyes, breathing hard. Just then, Todd heard a noise behind him, something like a scream coupled with a choked-back sob. He whirled around.

Toby stood just inside the barbershop, one hand still holding the door open as he stared in horror at the scene before him. His face was white as a sheet and he looked as though he might be sick. His mouth opened, but nothing came out except for another pathetic squeak.

In two quick strides, Mr Todd was standing face to face with the little boy. His eyes flicked quickly over Tobias Ragg, fixing at last on his wide brown eyes. 'It won't hurt.' He said, and then the razor flashed once more, and Toby crumpled onto the dusty floor of the shop.


	6. Chapter 6

_It's... alive? First let me say I am so, so sorry I took so long in updating this. There are a lot of reasons I could go into, but I won't because they're boring. But now, having found myself momentarily inspired again, I decided I owed it to you guys to give this story another go. (Not that I imagine anyone is still waiting for it.) Anyway, you've probably realized by now that I am very bad at sticking with things, so I wouldn't expect another chapter anytime soon (though that's not to say there won't be one. ) So sorry again for keeping you waiting, and enjoye the fabled chapter six!_

Toby's hand had been holding the door open, and when he fell to the floor, blood filling his mouth and flooding down from his throat, it swung back again on its hinges. It would have creaked all the way shut, but it was stopped by the boy's body, which, sprawled across the threshold, propped it open even in death.

Jerkily, Mr Todd turned back to the mechanical chair, in which his last customer was still seated, claret blood soaking his shirt front, and pressed the pedal with his scuffed right shoe. The chair yawned and stretched, tilting the dead man backwards and dumping him onto the bake house floor like a pile of dirty laundry. Todd watched the trapdoor close again, slowly wiping his stained razor on the white cloth at his waist, before turning back to the boy sprawled on the floor, his blood soaking into the old boards, dark and wet.

He moved to hover by the body, somehow reluctant to touch it. It didn't seem right, he reasoned, to throw Toby down into the cellar with everyone else, though a part of the barber would dearly like to do just that. The body made Sweeney Todd uncomfortable; he felt awkward, as though the two of them together—a boy and his murderer—were too big to both fit in the same sparsely furnished room. They defied the laws of physics with their existence.

But Mr Todd suppressed his urge to fly—out the door, down the stairs, and away from the little grey room that he himself had suffused with so much death. Instead, he knelt down to take the boy's lapels and drag him the rest of the way inside. The door banged shut behind them, and Toby's blood, impossibly red, smeared across the floor. His head tilted back, slashed throat gaping grotesquely. His eyes were still open, and Sweeney Todd closed them. In spite of this, Toby still didn't look peaceful. Was that how the barber had been trying to make him look?

Mr Todd shook his head and stood up, turning away from the dead boy. He was starting to move to his customary place by the window, his comfort zone, when the noise of footsteps startled him like a splash of cold water. Todd made a useless movement to try to cover the body, but the door was already swinging open again, and he let his hand fall back to his side.

Mrs Lovett stepped into the shop, her voice uncharacteristically quiet. "Did you finish him off, then? Mr T, I wanted to ask you"—her voice ended in a shriek when she saw Toby's body—crumpled and bloody on the floor—as Mr Todd had known it would. She rushed to the boy's side, but, like her neighbour, seemed unable to touch him. There is something terribly profane about a dead child.

So Mrs Lovett stood there, her hands half outstretched, floating a few feet above the boy, her breath coming in unsteady gasps. Eyes brimming, she turned to the barber, who stood impassively by his mechanical chair. "Mr Todd… why"—

"He saw me killing the last customer. Would've gone to the police." His voice softened, almost imperceptibly. "So, I had to, you see."

With eyes still mirrored with tears, Mrs Lovett stared at him. She gulped. Nodded. And then she collapsed, sobbing, into Sweeney Todd's arms.

* * *

The sky outside was the shatterglass blue that comes with a hard frost, pale clouds fluttering across its arch, trailing scraps behind them like tattered coattails. The white sun drew all color into it, bleaching the air with heatless light. Mrs Lovett tilted her head further back against the moldy headrest of the barber's chair, squinting red-rimmed eyes. Her voice sounded like rustling paper, and her hand quested for Mr Todd's, timid and small. "D'you think he's up there, Mr Todd?"

The barber, standing behind his occupied chair and following his landlady's gaze out the window and up at the sky, winced as her cold fingers found his, but he did not pull away. He glanced down at Mrs Lovett's upturned face. The sunken skin around her eyes was still damp with tears, and her hair, dusted with grey, he noticed, trailed its tangled ends across the back of the chair. Her gaze was not fixed on him, but on the window still, and the sky beyond, where she thought her adopted son must be frolicking in a wonderful place Sweeney Todd did not believe in.

He looked away from her, averting his eyes as if ashamed. "Of course he is," he said.

* * *

Mr Todd stood alone in his barbershop. It was midnight, the sky was pearly grey, and he knew this must be a dream. A whiteness was glowing faintly at the corner of his vision, emanating from edges of the wide window. Almost floating, the barber moved to stand by the milky glass, and peered warily outside. A sea of snow, blindingly white and sculpted into smooth waves by silent, ripping winds, stretched to a minute horizon.

As his wondering gaze traced the line where the snow and the pale sky brushed each other, Todd's eye was caught by a tiny dark figure, a woman, moving soundlessly at the far edge of this frozen world. She was coming closer to him, he saw, but struggling, her movements inhibited by the waist-deep drifts of snow.

Mr Todd watched her falter with something that, if he didn't know better, he would have called regret. He knew that he would wake very soon, and he wished vaguely that the snow would melt, so that the figure could come to him, and he could here what she had to say.


	7. Chapter 7

_Er, I don't know if anyone's still reading this, since it's been about 16 MONTHS since I last updated... but I'm back again! I really have been meaning to update this for a while, it just took me a bit longer than is probably socially acceptable. Once again, I could go on describing the reasons why, but once again, they would mostly be boring, or nonexistant. So I'll just let you read the story. _

It's a funny thing how, when two people live together for a time—whatever their relationship may be—they become subtly attuned to each other's movements, their comings and goings throughout the day, and can therefore instantly sense when something about their counterpart is not quite right. Though Sweeney Todd would never have claimed himself to be acutely aware of Mrs Lovett's bustling lifestyle, so removed from his own, he had, quite without realizing, adjusted to the rhythm of her daily routine. This was why, when the shop was silent at half past midnight, the door to the bake house ajar and the great black chimney empty of smoke, Sweeney Todd flinched and looked away from his shrouded view of the London street.

He didn't immediately register what had unsettled him; it was more of a vague conviction that the rhythm of life in the shop had been upset in some way. And so without really knowing why, Todd found himself closing his box of icily-glinting razors, stepping lightly down the stairs and into the shop, and leaning around the corner to peer down the steps to the bake house, which even at this hour, in the cold featureless face of a looming London winter, glowed oppressively hot.

The barber noticed that the heavy iron door was indeed half open, though he hadn't remembered anticipating that it would be. No sound was audible beneath the dull roar of the oven, though anything very quiet would have been easy to miss. Frowning, Mr Todd descended the stairs, his footsteps heavy and careless this time, and shoved the door all the way ajar. He wasn't afraid, he told himself, of what he might see on the other side.

Mrs Lovett's head snapped up as the door screeched wide, her eyes round and smeared with damp kohl and drying tears. When she saw it was Sweeney Todd who stood glowering in the doorway, her heart gave the wobbly lurch it always did—but this time the baker wished she could rip it from her chest and crush it beneath her boot heel for still, _still _wanting him. She bowed her head, closing her eyes as tears started in them again. When would she stop? Her hands gripped the edges of the little table she used for carving bodies as she heard him approach.

"Mrs Lovett?" His voice was quiet, but it lacked the tenderness she'd been wishing for. Still Mrs Lovett's eyes fluttered open, and she stole a glance at him without raising her head. His face was impassive, but to her it glowed hotter than the crackling oven. "Why aren't you working?" He didn't seem angry, or sympathetic. Just curious.

But Mrs Lovett seemed to crumple. She leaned over the blood-stained work table, staring up at the barber with imploring eyes already beginning to brim again with tears. "I'm sorry, Mr T," she breathed, "but I… I can't." She wiped at her cheeks, gulping. "I've tried but every man, all of them," she ducked her head and whispered her next words to the table. "They all have his face."

Mr Todd felt a twinge of what might be described as guilt, in a lesser man. But he knew that he had nothing to be guilty for. Mrs Lovett had forgiven him, agreeing that the boy's death had been necessary, that Sweeney Todd wasn't really to blame. That should have been the end of it. So why was she still crying?

Still, the barber supposed, something ought to be done. He took a reluctant step toward the woman still hunched over the work table, expecting her to once again fling herself on him and soak his shirtfront with tears. Instead, she miraculously straightened at his approach, her cheeks still wet, but her lip no longer quivering. She fixed him with a steady, determined gaze. "Mr Todd," she said, "I think it's time we tried something else."

Such had been the increasing popularity of the estimable little barbershop on Fleet Street, that half the neighbourhood had been put out when they'd scaled the rickety stairs to find a sign posted in the window explaining that they were closed for renovations. There were a few brief days of panic, as Londoners were forced to search for another establishment at which they might get a decent shave, until it was decided that tonsorial parlour around the corner would serve as an adequate replacement, until Mr Todd was able to reopen.

The Meat Pie Emporium downstairs was still doing business, but it was agree d that the savory confections now served there were somehow not of the same caliber as those one ate while the barbershop was open. However, as the flow of customers to number 186 began to ebb, the activity within the little building increased.

Sweeney Todd sat hunched before his small bureau, hardly aware of the winter chill trickling like slow but deadly floodwater into the room, or of the way the bones of his spine were grating uncomfortably against the back of the wooden chair. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he watched his white hand dip the pen into its post of ink, and begin forming spiny yet careful letters upon the page.

"To the Estimable Beadle Bamford:"

The barber paused, his pen suspended above the page, while ink collected heavy and glistening on its tip. He ran potential phrases through his mind, but none seemed the right one with which to proceed. He and Lovett had agreed upon what must be said, but they had talked little of precisely how to say it. Why couldn't _she_ do this? Mr Todd had never been any good at letter-writing.

As he heard the creak of his shop door opening, (no bell now—it had been taken down until business was to start up again, Todd resolved never again to let his landlady cross his mind. She seemed to possess the supernatural ability to sense whenever she was the subject of his musings, and to materialize at exactly that same instant.

"Well, Mr T? How do I look?"

His eyes didn't move from the paper. "Fine."

"Mr _Todd_."

He glanced up., She did look better—cleaner, at any rate. Her usually frayed and knotted ribbons of hair had been pinned slightly more successfully on top of her head, and her pale skin looked as though a layer of dust had been lifted off of it; it glowed faintly in the dim light. Her ever-shifting eyes were carefully rimmed with black kohl, and she regarded him seriously, expectantly.

"You look fine."  
She nodded, her dry lips curving slightly, although her eyes remained somber. One good thing that had come from this uncomfortable _problem_ the baker seemed to be having about that dead boy, Sweeney thought, was that she tended to talk much less now.

Still, she was presently craning over his shoulder to peer at the paper, still blank but for its lonely introduction, scribed neatly at the top. "Haven't you finished that yet, Mr Todd?"

"No."

"But I'm about to be off. I need it now. You've had two days, love, what have you been doing?"

He shrugged listlessly, but his black eyes narrowed in irritation as she reached over him to take the paper and pen. His gaze remained fixed on the empty space on his bureau, and he listened as she muttered to herself, scratching away with her pen on that stupid piece of paper. He wasn't entirely sure why she still irritated him so—after she had now supplied him with _two_ new ideas for exacting revenge (even if the first one _had_ proved unsuccessful.) It was partly her mannerisms, he supposed: her chatter, the way she leaned over, sighed, moved him about the room like he was a piece of furniture, and the way she looked at him, _still_, with a longing he could feel prickling on his skin, nudging at him when he'd forgotten to keep his guard up, trying to force its way in between the cracks.

It was Mrs Lovett's continued devotion, he decided, that bothered him the most, for he knew full well that he neither wanted nor deserved it. He had ignored the woman, struck her, snarled at her, even murdered her adopted son, and still she refused to recognize that Sweeney Todd was a hopeless cause, a stupid thing to be slicing her heart open for. What would it take for her to hate him?

Todd was just beginning to ponder the sort of awful depths to which he would have to sink, when the scribbling of the pen stopped, and he heard Mrs Lovett say, "Well that's done then."

He looked up to see her tucking the completed letter into Pirelli's old purse, which in turn was tucked into the bodice of her dress. She took a turn in front of his broken mirror, pinned her hat more securely into place, then opened the door again. "I won't be long, love. Wish me luck."

There was a slightly expectant pause, in which he said nothing, and then she smiled at him sadly, and closed the door behind her.


End file.
